UH Student Media

Day For Night Artist Spotlight: Aphex Twin

Richard David James, better known as Aphex Twin, sometimes stylized as AFX is a electronic musician and composer that is known for his riveting and “idiosyncratic” work in electronic music such as acid techno and IDM. These accomplishments alone have garnered James with high critical praise, and made him a legend in the genre,

James was born August 18, 1971 in Limerick, Ireland. He accredits his early childhood for helping him to reach such a high status in music, by him winning a competition as a child. “When I was 11, I won 50 pounds in a competition for writing this program that made sound on a ZX81. You couldn’t make sound on a ZX81, but I played around with machine code and found some codes that returned the TV signal so that it made this really weird noise when you turned the volume up.” This exact moment helped gear James’ entire career.

His first full length album was released in 1992, entitled Selected Ambient Works 85–92, a compilation of music that catapulted him from being relatively unknown to a genre pioneer.

To hear some of these legendary sounds, you can catch Aphex Twin at the Day For Night Music festival in Houston Texas; you won’t want to miss this one, it has been nearly a decade since his last performance in the U.S., and more than twenty since his last in the Bayou City. This truly is a once in a lifetime time performance.